


Peregrine

by Joysweeper



Series: Crucibles [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short stories set in a version of the Galaxy Far, Far Away in which the Force is entangled with Dust, and humans and some near-humans have dæmons, animal-shaped manifestations of their consciousness or souls.</p><p>Luke and Peregrine settle, and there is no return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Contains an adaptation of a flashback seen in Marvel Star Wars 17 - Crucible. Fic series takes its name from this.

His Skyhopper’s ion engines wailed, pitch climbing as Luke hurtled it through the twists and turns of Beggar’s Canyon, skimming so low above the shadowy floor that the airspeeder’s cabin vibrated with near collisions. He looked ahead through the small viewport, at the displays, and tried to keep his mind on maneuvering. One mistake at this speed and they were dead. If he pulled up and into clearer air, and the Tusken Raiders had a chance to turn that stolen heavy ordinance on them, they were dead.

And he couldn’t slow down - stars, he couldn’t slow for an instant. Peregrine clung to the collar of his tunic as a twirrl, staring at the passenger seat in horror. He tried, but he couldn’t quite block out the view from her eyes.

Eidari quivered with every pained gasp that escaped Biggs’ lips, her wing-cases open and trembling, her wings themselves still folded. She kept licking the hand that he pressed against his shoulder, wanting instinctively to clean out the wound under it, knowing as well as he did that that would just help spread the venom. The wound was so close to his heart...

He couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about how the Sand People had the rest of the gang pinned down on a plateau, cut off from _their_ skyhoppers, about the great raiding party heading towards Anchorhead, about how home was between them and it, about the Raider he’d just shot in one instinctual gesture, about how impossible it was for a _skyhopper_ , twelve meters across with intact airfoils, to get through Diablo’s Cut.

Rocks loomed ahead. Luke banked too sharply for the inertial compensator, and Biggs groaned as he was jostled. Peregrine tore her gaze forward, shifting into half a dozen different small sharp-eyed forms to try and help Luke see to maneuver as he fed still more power into acceleration.

“Luke,” Biggs whispered. They didn’t look at him, couldn’t. “Pere... I must’ve been crazy... to get you into this. It can’t be... done... it...” His breath escaped in a sigh as Eidari whimpered. They didn’t look at him, but they knew, he’d passed out. It wouldn’t be long now.

The canyon split ahead. They looked neither left nor right, but at what looked like a dark spot near the base of a sheer cliff. He’d been here before, with Biggs, in landspeeders and on foot. They’d seen the shattered Podracers at the entrance and all through the cave system, picked over by Jawas until there was nothing left but scrap metal.

Luke angled the skyhopper into a steep dive, pulled up fast, and then leveled off to fly straight into the mouth of the cave, barely slowing. They were instantly engulfed in darkness. The only light was from the sensors and displays in the cabin, and they showed a chaos of rock and wrecks. He felt Peregrine change forms desperately, stopping as the dark formless creature and clutching at his neck and clothes so she wouldn’t fall.

 _BANG!_ He fought the controls as the starboard airfoil struck a stalactite and managed to keep from spinning out, somehow not colliding with something else as he tried to level off while weaving desperately. The skyhopper whipped over tumbled rubble, turned half on its side to keep from striking the ceiling with its top airfoil, and Luke struggled against its new tendency to cant left, courtesy of that damaged airfoil. A curtain of stalactites loomed on the scope like dragon’s teeth.

And then...

He was calm. They turned the skyhopper just enough to pass an airfoil through a narrow gap, and it was easy. They turned farther and deliberately slammed that same airfoil against a solid column, leaving half of it behind, and Luke’s hands were already compensating, so that the jolt away from the impact took them around a heap of rubble decorated with broken Podracers. It was easy. It was like they’d done it a hundred times before.

Luke closed his eyes and opened them again, but it didn't change. They both still saw. It was all... well, it was not color, it was not light, but it was easy to think of it as having both qualities. As being golden. It lived and breathed and it was in him and Peregrine, in Biggs and Eidari, in the abused skyhopper, in the caves and the wrecks and the planet and the sky, as if all had one thunderous, soaring heartbeat. And it was like _Luke_ was all those things, one with them, the same way he was one with his daemon. What to do, and when, it was as clear as if he had guides.

They spun away from the old Podracer track and into a smooth-walled straightaway with a steep incline. An old lava tube, Luke knew somehow, and also: they could accelerate still more now. They did. With their airfoils damaged they cleared the edges, barely, but it felt like they had kilometers of space to spare. And ahead! A jagged crack with pale sky showing!

That guiding calm evaporated under Luke’s surge of desperate joy. Unconscious though their best friend was, Peregrine cried out to him, “Open sky! Hang on guys, we’re gonna make it!”

With a horrible jarring scrape they shot through the opening into open air. Through Peregrine Luke was vaguely aware that there was a Tusken Raider scouting party on the ground here, and they hadn’t expected anyone to come through that opening, but still - after a moment the skyhopper shuddered as heavy blaster fire hit their afterburner. And then they were away, too far ahead to be sighted on.

Warnings scrolled across the little craft’s screens. Luke stole a look at them, stole another at Eidari curled like a dead animal against Biggs’ chest, and diverted still more power to acceleration, reaching top speed and soon rocketing over the Mospic High Range and Bestine. The skyhopper was shaking and acrid smoke tinged the cockpit, warning lights flashed, Peregrine said, “It’s _on fire_ , Luke, we’ll explode if we keep on. We’re not gonna get to Anchorhead.”

“Yeah.” Even before she’d spoken, he had started angling for home, as if on instinct.

Quickly he found the white entry dome and, teeth gritted, dumped as much speed as he dared before plowing the skyhopper into the sand. It skidded and bounced in great gouts of sand, throwing the humans against their restraints and dropping Eidari’s limp body into the passenger footwell, shearing off one of the damaged airfoils, but they rocked to a stop and didn’t explode.

Luke barely winced for the machine, as much as he loved it and as many hours as he and Peregrine had put into it. They were alive, Biggs was still breathing, and he could see Uncle Owen slinging himself onto Auret’s back to come at them at a dead run.

Peregrine slithered out of the hatch before it was fully open and cried, “Get a medpack for Biggs, an’ call out the militia _fast! _”__


	2. Chapter 2

Everything was over by evening.

The militia had come to the rescue, driving the Tusken Raiders back, and a fast-acting antitoxin had done the trick. Biggs was at home now, recovering from the venom and the impact of the gaffi stick that had been smeared with it. In a couple of days he was going to be well enough to go to the Academy. They’d been planning to leave for it a few days early, and the gathering at Beggar’s Canyon had been a kind of farewell party. So... nothing had really changed, in the end.

Nothing, except that Peregrine hadn’t shifted from the dark form once, in all those hours.

Out by the wreckage of his skyhopper, under the distant eye of the not-a-bonegnawer, Luke didn’t want to ask. He didn’t have to.

“Guess this's it,” she said at last, after they’d run out of damages to catalog, after even the pretense of looking at their much-beloved airspeeder in dismay was exhausted.

He knew the answer, but... “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” She coiled her darkness around his hands, and in them. He squeezed gently, feeling whatever she was made of harden from something semiliquid to something like stone. “It just... feels right.”

They were the last of the group to settle. Some of their friends liked saying it meant they would never grow up, they’d always be Wormie. Others had started noticing too - in the street at Anchorhead last week someone had called out asking how old they were. He’d hated that, but it made sense. Seventeen was _late_ , after all, older even than Biggs and Eidari had been when they settled.

Their excuse was just that they were late bloomers, but... Out in the desert working on vaporators, on one of the countless occasions when they were looking for something, anything to get away from the monotony, he and Peregrine had talked once about Jedi dæmons. About the rumor that even in old age, they _never_ settled.

Neither could remember where they’d heard it, and they certainly hadn’t ever said anything to anyone else, not even family. They hadn’t even really dared speculate. It was dangerous to even know much about the Jedi, let alone to be... weird, like they had been. The Inquisitorius might take an interest.

So... it was good. It was... it was a relief, to be settled at last.

But this form! Luke looked at his hands and tried not to see Peregrine, but the alien creature whose shape she’d taken. He was familiar with it, of course. She’d taken it more and more often when they were alone, but now he tried to see as if for the first time. As if he were Biggs, years ago.

His hands were wrapped and encased in something black and gleaming, with hints of color in its depths. It moved without bones, without joints, and it had no eyes or mouth, no organs at all. He knew it could be cut or flattened without harm or even without showing blood or plasma, like its cells were totally undifferentiated. There was a sinuous aspect to it, it could stretch tentacles or limbs out of the whole, but it was a blob. Where part of it touched any other, they melted together without a seam. It could go from being as hard as glass to being liquid, but was usually somewhere in between, yielding and moldable.

It was more like some exotic pair of wrist binders, or some kind of alien art, than an animal. Peregrine had settled as _this?_

All their life they had dreamed of being far-explorers, landing on some distant world, and Luke would step out onto land that had never felt human feet before, and Peregrine would circle just overhead as some keen-eyed flier, feeling alien air on her wings, spotting things he couldn’t see, and they would be the first together.

Never would they watch an ocean or the Flamewind through eyes that could see ultraviolet and infrared. Never would they listen to the sounds of some distant world and hear things too faint for human ears, or too high or low in pitch. Never would she echolocate to guide him through the dark. They’d never get to taste something with an inhuman tongue and determine if he could eat it, or track something by smell, or any of their thousand other plans.

“I know,” his dæmon said quietly, mourning that dream as sharply as he did. Any form she could have settled into would have meant losing some of those plans. But _all_ of them? “I know.”

“It’s in my _name_ ,” he said. He knew he was complaining. Right now, he didn’t care. “‘Skywalker’.”

Peregrine wrapped herself further, along his forearms too. It was in her name too - far-traveler, long wanderer, the one who roamed and never returned, and now she had settled as something that had to be carried to move as fast as a walk. He held her to his chest and looked out at the setting suns, swallowing his bitterness. They left a bright afterimage when he closed his eyes.

It was impossible to change, after settling. That was what she was. This was what _he_ was.

They couldn’t hide it anymore, like they’d been doing for years and years, only taking that form when they were alone. Uncle Owen hadn’t liked alien forms, period. Biggs always found it creepy. Everyone else... he’d been afraid people would think it was weird, because it _was_ a weird form, but they hadn’t known how anyone would react.

People’d find out now. For some reason... it was like they’d been keeping a secret for all this time, and now, with everyone about to find out, it... wasn’t really a bad feeling. It was better to think of that, than to nurse the unfairness of it all. He knew very well that wouldn’t help anything.

Luke opened his eyes, sighed deeply, and struggled to find the good in this. “Well... You’re what, two kilograms?”

“Yeah. And I can... not take up much space.” She didn’t demonstrate, but they already knew she could wrap herself around him like a belt, or fill a pocket, or otherwise be small and out of the way.

“Spacers always have small dæmons. Snubfighter pilots, ‘specially.” He knew there were exceptions, that there were fighters built to accommodate larger ones, but those were never as fast or as free. “Probably we wouldn’t even need an emergency bubble for you, you could just be... on me. We could even maybe fly things humans aren’t supposed to be able to, the ones without dæmon holds. Pod racers and so on.”

She sighed too. “Yeah. And we’ll never have a problem with speeder bikes.” It was hard to see the good right now. No more hiding, and they could fly any craft he could fit into. Neither of them could think of anything more, so they watched the sunset through Luke’s eyes, silent. The events from earlier, when it was like they and the skyhopper and everything else were one, seemed far away and unreal. They didn’t want to think about it, anyway, it was just the kind of thing that wasn’t supposed to happen.

Then they had a knowing, their first since settling. He wasn’t sure if it felt different, but he thought it might. They both felt it at the same time, and turned before Luke could hear the crunch of boots on sand.

The old hermit Ben Kenobi was approaching, circling around the wrecked skyhopper and moving with the help of a tall staff. His dæmon, a long-legged reptavian that stood as high as his chest, strode some distance away at his side, surveying the scene while Ben met Luke’s eyes. Carrying Peregrine under his arm, Luke came out to meet him.

“It sounds like you had quite the adventure,” Ben called when they were close enough. He was an odd old man, and none of Luke’s friends liked him. Of course, Uncle Owen hated him.

Luke smiled and glanced towards the entry dome, checking that Owen and Auret weren’t in sight. “Aaah, the militia did most of the work. An' some of the gang. Fixer’s gonna be bragging for months, I can just tell.”

“Of course, their courage was admirable. But so was yours, my young friend.” The hermit had warm, worn eyes. He looked at Peregrine, and if she could still see, they might have been able to catch the expression that flitted across his face before it was covered by a thoughtful look. Too late Luke glanced at the man’s dæmon, but if she had shown anything, she was every bit as quick to hide it, gazing at them with curious calm as Ben stroked his white beard.

Peregrine extended short, thick tendrils and half pulled herself, half oozed up onto Luke’s shoulder, melting a little to mold to it but still not entirely stable. She had a little difficulty, and he felt the weight immediately. “This is gonna be awkward,” she complained in a mutter, and then raised her voice. “D'you know what I am? I don’t, we saw it in a dream once.”

She was addressing Ben directly. It wasn’t the first time, they trusted him, but now that he thought of it, Luke couldn’t remember ever hearing Ben’s dæmon speak. Plenty of dæmons weren’t very talkative, but _never_?

Slowly, Ben admitted. “I have seen such a form.” His eyes were distant. “It’s been many years, and it was... quite far from here.”

“How far? Where was this, were you off Tatooine?” Luke grabbed eagerly at that phrase. Ben _never_ talked about his past. He was so secretive!

But the hermit just gave one of his tired smiles and sank to rest on the big tookit Luke and Peregrine had hauled out to the skyhopper. “It was an offworld form, but just what creature it was a reflection of, I’m afraid I never knew.” He stretched his legs out in front and nodded at Luke’s dæmon. “Perhaps you would find it easier to take both shoulders, young Peregrine, as if you were a scarf.”

Immediately Peregrine flowed, extending much of herself along the back of Luke’s neck. She shifted too much mass too quickly and almost fell as the cloth she was plastered across slipped a little against Luke’s skin. He instinctively clapped his hand over part of her, and she recovered and eased herself into a more stable position.

When he looked back to Ben he thought he saw the man’s hand lowering. Probably nothing. Luke wanted to ask more, but he knew that look, and that he wouldn’t get anything more. “We’ll get used to it.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Thanks, though.”

Ben nodded slowly. “You’ve settled.”

“Yeah...” It didn’t surprise him that Ben knew. Conversation aside, some people claimed they could tell if someone had just settled, that it showed in how the person walked and carried themselves. And Ben always seemed knowing, anyway.

“Well. Your aunt and uncle will be pleased with the news.” Ben’s voice was gentler than Luke would have expected. Luke glanced at his face and didn’t see the pity he’d half expected. Just kindness, and something he couldn't name.

He looked away. “Yeah, I - I guess.” Peregrine said it for him, plaintive. “It’s not what we’d have chosen.”

“It seldom is. You will find that there are very few people who had no regrets upon settling.”

Luke snorted. “You haven’t been hanging out with the gang. Should’ve seen Windy strutting, an' Deke not even a week after that. They’re proud of their forms.” Koeber was a small dewback, and Tissa was a sketto. Biggs had congratulated them, and later told Luke that those were exactly the forms he would have expected, but he’d never explained just what he meant.

Ben persisted. “The faces that they show their friends are proud. Perhaps alone, they feel differently.”

“I guess,” Luke allowed. Maybe he wasn’t totally convinced, but it made sense. He turned away, restless. The wind was picking up as the suns sank out of view and it was getting colder. Night chilled fast on Tatooine.

“Everything’s gonna be different now, isn’t it? Tank’s been gone for months, now Biggs is going.” He felt a bit of a lump in his throat. Peregrine continued for him. “We’re not really like anyone who’s left. No one else in the gang's even got an alien dæmon, and this makes it really obvious. We’re the only ones who wanna get off this rock and... _anything_.”

Ben was quiet, so Luke recovered his voice and went on, no longer sure of his point and just hoping it made the kind of sense it had in his head. “They’re supposed to reflect us. It's... it’s different.”

He could hear the hint of a smile in Ben’s voice. “You will not remain here forever. You’ve told me as much. I believe you have made it clear to others, as well.”

“I... Yeah. Yeah, they don’t believe me, but it doesn’t really matter. Though it’s not like they aren’t my friends!” he added hotly a moment later. “It’s not like I won’t miss them when I go.”

“As it should be. Moving on is much like settling in that respect. Whether acknowledged or not, there are few people without regrets.”

Was he talking from experience? Hoping, again, that Ben’s dæmon was more expressive, Luke looked at her. She looked back at him with calm, weary eyes set in scaly yellow skin, as weathered in its way as Ben’s human skin, and gave away nothing.

“Y'know, sometimes I wish you weren’t so mysterious,” Peregrine complained, resigned.

He heard Ben chuckle. “Perhaps this might be easier if you were able to claim a name for her species, and an origin.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know- wait, you mean make one up?” They were startled. Peregrine curled against Luke’s skin.

“It isn’t precisely a lie, if you object to those. How do you suppose new creatures are ever named? It is difficult to tell if there wasn’t someone before, who had some other name for the same thing.” Ben tipped his head to the side slightly, a gesture of reluctance. “As well, it might serve to deflect some attention. It is not unheard of for dæmons to take forms seen in dreams, but there are those who find it suspect.”

That was the first they’d ever heard of _that_. “What do you mean, it’s not?”

Ben’s dæmon partly opened her wings and resettled them across her back again. Luke honestly couldn’t tell if it was related to the conversation or if sand had got in and bothered her. Either way, Ben himself had only shrugged. “It’s not widely known, of course.”

“Luke!” “Peregrine!” His aunt’s voices, made a little fainter with the distance to the entry dome. They had another little pang of regret as he turned his head; this was something his dæmon couldn’t do anymore. “Come back in here! We're putting up the perimeter!”

“I believe that is my signal to leave as well, my friends.” Ben got to his feet and took a fresh grip on his staff.

Luke interposed himself between the hermit and the entry dome, just in case anyone looked out. “Yeah, don’t want my uncle knowing you were here.” Peregrine shifted against his skin and asked, “We’ll see you again, right?”

“Of course you will.” The old man nodded, almost a bow, and Luke hastened to nod back. Ben’s dæmon turned away a moment after he did, looking at them with that same inscrutable lack of expression.

“We’ll be okay,” Luke told Peregrine. “Right?”

She reached a tendril up and touched it against his cheek, smooth and cool. “I think so.” For a moment, they remembered the flight... but it was dangerous to think about that kind of thing. Her tendril drifted down and melted back into her mass.

And... they had killed someone, today. The Tusken Raider who'd attacked Biggs. He'd just... appeared and thrown his weapon, and Luke had brought his rifle up and sighted and fired, all without thinking. Those people were so hostile to humans, and he would have killed both of them if he could, but... even so. Maybe they didn't have the kinds of dæmon that humans did, but they bonded to their banthas, and one was always supposed to know if the other was hurt or worse. By now that raider's companion had probably killed itself. He shuddered and felt Peregrine tighten. It had been as easy as shooting a womp rat.

"But I didn't settle then," she reminded him. "I was a xendrite. We're a pilot, not a killer. Or- not _just_ a killer," Peregrine added sadly, because they _were_ , now.

"I should've talked to Ben about it," Luke sighed. The hermit was still close enough to catch up to, probably, and it was tempting. But no. His aunt would be wondering what kept him, and Owen would find out that the hated Kenobi was on Lars property again, and it would all be a mess. He picked up the toolkit. "We'll find him tomorrow, maybe."

He looked up to check for the thing that looked like a bonegnawer, and saw nothing but the first stars. "It's not there," Peregrine murmured. "It always flies off around nightfall anyway."

"Yeah." Luke hefted the toolkit and they started back home, rehearsing what they would say to family.


End file.
